Movies

Once I was Belgian

53' / 1999

Luc de Heusch

Everything started in the summer of 1830, with the opening night of an opera which fanned the flames of revolution and the enthusiasm of the Flemish and the Walloons to fight against the authority of the king of Holland. Everything ended, a hundred and fifty years later, by the construction of a great invisible wall between the North and the South of the country and by the divorce of two communities, leaving the nation then torn apart and vulnerable. Between this period, a long series of conflicts and altercations crystallized the differences between the two linguistic identities... From a personal point of view and through his childhood memories, Luc de Heusch comments on the chaotic history of Belgium, from its origins to the present day.

Will Belgium be dissolved into a federal Europe where similar situations are already apparent? Does Belgium still exist? Is the answer a bitter acknowledgment to failure?